Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/01/10

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Subject: Re: [Leica] M6 metering
From: Jim Brick <jim@brick.org>
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 18:30:53 -0800

At 05:15 PM 1/10/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Luggers,
>
>can anybody of you experts explain why I can not get a meter reading with
>the M6, Viso III and Telyt 200? I am baffled.
>
>Andras Iklody-Szabo
>Caracas / Venezuela
> 

Sounds to me like your subject matter is dictating your meter reading.
Remember that the M6 is a semi spot meter and at 200mm it's reading the
central portion of a subject reasonably far away. You might have had a very
dark part of the subject centered in your frame. That would make the meter
attempt to expose for this dark part of the subject, which could be too
dark for the existing f/stop (did have it wide open?), film, and shutter
speed selections. In order to use a semi spot meter successfully with a
long lens, you sometimes have to point the camera at a subject that
exhibits an 18% grey density level, take the reading, then point the camera
back to what the real subject is and take the photograph, WITHOUT changing
the exposure reading you got from reading the neutral subject. R-Leica
users do this all the time, albeit much simpler.

Jim